Innocent Love
by Nephthys Moon
Summary: Chibiusa is sent to her mother's teenage years to train to become a senshi. In her dreams, she finds what she truly came to seek.


_It began in dreams._

I, Princess Small Lady Tsukino Usagi, was just one month shy of being nine hundred years old when I fell in love. _Nine hundred?_ I am sure you are thinking. _But people do not live that long!_ But in the presence of my family heirloom, the Mystical Silver Crystal, they do. They live much, much longer than that.

My mother was over one hundred years old when she gave birth to me, for the gestation period of the Princess of the Moon is not nine months, but ninety-nine years. And at nine hundred I was still a chibi, still Small Lady of the Silver Millennium, and I wanted nothing more than to be a great lady, like my mother, Neo-Queen Serenity.

I was sent to the past, to the year when my mother was but a girl of fifteen herself, to train to become a senshi as powerful as my mother had been in the days before she was Queen of the Earth and Moon, the most powerful of all the Sailor Soldiers, Sailor Moon. But I was still a chibi.

Sailor Chibi Moon, I was called, when I transformed into a senshi, and Chibi-usa when I was not. Always a chibi, but my dream was to become a lady and to fall in love. For though I loved the life of a Sailor Warrior, I knew that the time would come that I would inherit my full powers, and become Queen. When that happened to me, I would lose the ability to transform, as had my mother, and become a mere guardian for the Mystical Silver Crystal.

I knew that I would someday become a lady, especially as I looked upon my mother's teenage self, for if someone that clumsy and selfish could one day become Queen of the Earth and Moon, then surely, I could as well. And so I dreamed of the day I would no longer be chibi, when I would be a great lady, and those of my kingdom would stop staring, stop saying that the princess was nothing like her elegant mother.

My dreams became my entire world that year, for it was there that I met Helios, a priest of Elysion, and a guardian of the Golden Crystal of the Earth. He came to me in the form of a Pegasus, and with him I fought alongside my mother, Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibi Moon, and her guardian soldiers. In my dreams, we talked of everything, and htough my body was that of a chibi, my heart was that of a woman, and with my woman's heart, I began to fall in love with the companion of my dreams; first in his Pegasus form, and later, in his actual form. For as a Pegasus, he was truly lovely, a gleaming white horse with the wings of an angel and a glittering golden horn: The Golden Crystal.

And when the end came, and the evil was defeated, the Pegasus stopped visiting my dreams, for I had awoken as the Princess, and I was no longer a chibi. My appearance changed. My short, stumpy legs grew long and graceful, as long and graceful as my mother's teenage form. My waist grew slimmer and nipped in the way the fashion models' did, and my bosom became as lush and ripe as Mako-chan's, who boasted of having the fullest bosom of the senshi. My short hair, with it's thick, puffy odango lengthened and smoothed, spiraling in narrow trails past my hips. My body was no longer that of a chibi, no longer looked as though it belonged to a seven-year-old. Overnight, it took on the shape and proportion of a girl of sixteen, and I knew then that I had finally come into my powers at last.

I went home, and joined my mother's senshi as Sailor Moon. My guardians awoke from their long sleep and joined by my side. I had friends and family near me. When I returned from the past, it was difficult for me to equate my loving parents with their former selves. How could Usagi have gone from her clumsy self to the vision of perfection which I aspired to be, the Great Queen? My father was not as difficult to reconcile, for he had always, in any form, seemed the perfect embodiment of man to me. It was only after having met him in his former identity, that of Mamoru and Tuxedo Mask, that I realized how very differently he behaved towards my mother.

As Tuxedo Mask, my father had saved both my mother and myself from many dangers, but the roses and top hat were gone in our Silver Millennium, and I missed those more than I realized. As Mamoru, my father had tolerated a great deal of humiliation at the hands of Usagi, my mother, and her gauche, childish ways. He had always treated her with loving tolerance and patience in that guise, but as King Endymion, my father was somehow less than my mother.

He didn't have her power, had never even come close, but her immaturity had often made him look the stronger of the two. As Queen, my mother ruled, and my father seemed quite content, no, pleased and satisfied, by being in her shadow. He watched her with near worship on his face, and I couldn't understand it at all.

Filled with the recent tenderness of love, I determined to watch them in secret, for I could not believe that love had changed my mother so, or that love had altered my father in such a way that he no longer felt the need to protect my mother. Was love such that it subverted your sense of self and made the other person greater?

Feeling much like a child, I hid behind doors, desperately listening to the murmurs of their voices through small openings. It was then I learned that outward appearances were often misleading. My heart stopped when I heard, for the first time, my father refer to my mother as Usagi, or rather, his pet name for her former self, Usako. My mother was no longer Usagi, she was Queen, and even her Soldiers, her dearest friends, called her Neo-Queen Serenity.

It was then I understood. Being the Keeper of the Silver Crystal was a large burden upon my mother. She was only a great lady because she had to be. Given her own way, she would still be Tsukino Usagi, eating everything in sight and generally being a clumsy fool. And while my father appreciated her as she was now, he preferred her silly ways to the mask of the great lady she showed to the world.

With that one word, Usako, I understood much that had troubled me about my parents relationship. And I learned the true meaning of love. I looked down at my form. My royal gown was white, emblazoned across the full bosom with golden crescent moons, and trailing to my toes. It would have to do.

I went into my father's library, where he had told me upon my homecoming to treat as though it were my own, and pulled down a small, gold-covered book. I marked down the information I would need on a slip of paper and walked purposefully towards the entrance of the Crystal Palace. My heart fell as I saw my father standing alone at the door. He would try to stop me, I knew.

"Princess Serenity," he said softly. He pulled me into his arms and hugged me tightly. "Bring him home by order of his King, Chibi-usa," my father whispered into my hair.

"Thank you, Mamo-chan," I said softly, looking into his eyes, watching a tear form in the corners.

He released me, and I set off, reaching the gates of Elysion before the sun set. And there he was. With my new height, he wasn't much taller than me anymore. His eyes and hair were the same, but the horn atop his head was gone, and the crystal glittered in a protective niche not far away.

"My maiden," he whispered, looking as though the breath had been stolen from his lungs.

"Helios," I replied softly, uncertain as to my next move. I had loved him once, and I still did, but he had never told me if he felt the same, and looking into his eyes now, I did not know if he ever had. I stopped walking a few feet in front of him, and for long moments, we simply stared at one another, until he moved.

In forceful, determined strides, he closed the gap between us and pulled me tightly into his arms.

"I love you, my maiden," he whispered hoarsely before pulling me closer and placing a fierce, passionate kiss upon my lips, a kiss that told of the years that he'd been waiting, guarding my family heirloom, the Golden Crystal, and waiting for me to arrive.

And it was there, many long hours and kisses later, as we lay, spent, upon the grassy fields of Elysion, that he asked for my hand, and it was there, not too many months later, that we exchanged our vows and moved on into the future, together.


End file.
